About abbreviations

• An abbreviation is form-dependent and derivative; it does not constitute a distinct concept.
• An abbreviation may correspond to one or more full forms, depending on domain, language, or jurisdiction.
• Abbreviations may be classified by type (e.g. initialism, acronym, truncation, contraction) and orthographic form.
• An abbreviation may have usage constraints, such as first-use expansion requirements, register limitations, or ambiguity warnings.

Distinction or terms from related entities

• Abbreviation vs term: an abbreviation is a reduced form of a term; a term is the full linguistic designation.
• Abbreviation vs acronym: an acronym is a type of abbreviation pronounced as a word; not all abbreviations are acronyms.
• Abbreviation vs symbol: an abbreviation is language-based; a symbol may be non-linguistic or language-independent.

Abbreviation metadata

1. Abbreviation text
2. Grammatical type (e.g., initialism, acronym)
3. Expanded text (i.e, the full description of the abbreviations)
4. Domain or discipline this record belongs to or is associated with
5. Jurisdiction this record belongs to or is associated with
6. Role: Select how you intend to use this concept:
   • Preferred: primarily the one to use
   • Admitted: a variety of this same terms
   • Deprecated: this concept is no long er in use
7. Status: Identify the status of adding this concept
   • Draft: needs more info
   • Under review: by another person
   • Approved for use but not yet published
   • Published and available
   • There is a wide variety of status stages (see also 'Terminology workflow')
8. Language: designate which language this concept has been added using (e.g., English)
9. Note: add any other information that is relevant (e.g., a guidance note on the use of this concept)

Relationships

1. Relationships with specific records (e.g., concepts, terms, or names):
   • Select the relationships type and use a shortcut key to tag another term to lonk them together
2. Collections: tags that identify what collection(s) you have used this term in
3. Documents: tags that identify what document(s) you have used this term in

Authority & Source

1. Authority refers to an organization or group that provided evidence for the use of this term (e.g., judicial, government, published)
   • Authority type: select the type of entity that provided authority for this term to exist
   • Add the description of the authority or use the shortcut key to select the an existing person or oganization from your terminology data
2. Source refers to the external documentary evidence you used for compiling this record
   • The title of the reference work that contains this evidence (the work should be in your reference library)
   • Use the backslash key and enter the title to link the reference record
   • Open the library record for this source by clicking the library icon
   • Add a new reference record to your library by clicking the + icon

Adding a list into a document

1. A smart list will produce a list of all terms found in your document across all sections
2. See Style Guide / Terminology for editing the format of smart lists

Tips

• Create different collections for easy maintenance, exporting, or sharing
• We do not produce a list of work items, quotes, paraphrase, text blocks or websites as these are generally not required when writing documents.
• You can export any collection in full directly from the collection record
• If an abbreviation has been added in multiple places and needs updating, you can do so by editing the record and it will automatically update all instances

See also

• Adding a collection of terms
• Exporting a collection of terms
• Annotations / Add terms
• Style Guide / Terminology smart lists